GDC 06: Chat with Eguchi

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We interview the head of Animal Crossing to talk about the DS and Revolution versions.

By Craig Harris

It's been a little more than three months since the release of Animal Crossing: Wild World on the Nintendo DS. Three months for millions of gamers to live a second life on the handheld, and three months to experience the difference between the GameCube original and the dual-screen follow-up.

We had the opportunity to chat with Katsuya Eguchi at the Game Developers Conference today, where we threw several Animal Crossing questions his way. The man was very open to talk about where he's been and where he's going with the series.

IGN: Yesterday at your panel, you revealed that you're researching Animal Crossing for the Revolution. What direction will the series take on that system?

Katsuya Eguchi: Unfortunately, I have nothing to report. Honestly, we're just in the "If we're going to do it, what can we do " stage of development. Nothing really down on paper yet. I know there are specific areas we need to look at for the Revolution version. A lot of the feedback from the Nintendo DS version will certainly influence what we should do. One aspect is with the Wi-Fi: what should we do, what shouldn't we do, are we going to keep the features the same as the Nintendo DS version, things like that.

IGN: So with the DS version out the door and in everyone's hands, what have you been hearing are the most favorite and least favorite aspects of the portable rendition?

Katsuya Eguchi: One of the things I find really amusing myself is the turnip market, where players talk about what price the turnips are selling in their village, and how they'll beg friends to open up their village when the prices are high. The whole idea of players running around finding the best prices is really funny to me, and seems like a very popular element of the game. Also, the whole idea of putting patterns out on the ground to show friends and get their input seems to be a popular thing to do, too.

The idea of the store closing at night seems to be very unpopular because it limits what you can do. You can't buy or sell anything at night, and it affects how much you can fish since you run out of room in your inventory. We may have to find a different way for people to stay active at night without limiting their choices and tasks.

IGN: Though you can do a lot over Wi-Fi and local area connection in Animal Crossing, there were still restrictions placed on the village - your animals wouldn't come outside, for example, and you could only have two people in a single structure. Why were these restrictions put in place?

Katsuya Eguchi: RAM and hardware limitations, really. Obviously we wanted the full Animal Crossing experience in multiplayer, but if you get four players in your village, you've got four human models to deal with and have to keep track of all of their items, and what they're going to do. That, plus having animals wandering around, it just got too much to track.

IGN: So did you have to restrict local area features to make both that and Wi-Fi as similar as possible?

Katsuya Eguchi: We wanted to keep local and Wi-Fi identical, and obviously local could probably do a little more than Wi-Fi but we kept the feature list low to get them to match. We knew what our limitations were going to be right from the start, so when we worked on the wireless connectivity we built to the limitations instead of stripping features out.

IGN: There are a lot of little things in the game design. Are there any elements most players still don't know about?

Katsuya Eguchi: One thing off the top of my head is probably the cross-pollination of flowers where you plant two different types of plants together to make a new variety of flower that you can't purchase. Honestly I haven't been keeping track of what players are discovering, so maybe everything's been found, maybe there are a few things still in there.

IGN: Do you see Animal Crossing as a franchise that can continue as sequels on one platform, or is it strictly a one game for each system design?

Katsuya Eguchi: I can definitely see additional versions on a single platform, I can see another DS version down the line. You'd have to do things to make it a different experience, but I wouldn't rule out that it isn't a franchise that's restricted to one game per platform.

IGN: What do you feel was the biggest item removed from the GameCube game that most people miss?

Katsuya Eguchi: The biggest thing I think is that holidays like Christmas and Halloween are not in the Nintendo DS game. Those holidays were good accents and highlights for the calendar year. But since we designed the game for a worldwide release, the holidays might not be as meaningful to those in territories that don't celebrate them.

IGN: So with that worldwide mentality, what was the reason for limiting the Wi-fi access to regional play? Japanese gamers can't visit a North American village or vice versa.

Katsuya Eguchi: That's something we really wanted to do. Japan was the odd beast out, unfortunately, because players in America and Europe can definitely connect with each other. It's all because of the language. The Japanese version is the only version with the Japanese font in it, Europe and US have an alphabet based font with special characters. Trying to add the Japanese font on top of this was too much data, we couldn't figure a way to clear enough ram up to do this.

IGN: There seems to be some specific Wi-Fi enabled items in the game, like the Mario Coin awarded to Wi-Fi players earlier this year. How many of these items are still left to earn?

Katsuya Eguchi: Hmm. I have to think about this. I think there's a whole Mario set to earn, where the Mario Coin comes into play. There's probably more stuff, but I just can't say.

Katsuya Eguchi: Technical limitations. If you're going to send a letter to me from your village, it has to go somewhere, so we would have had to set up a mail server for this. And if I'm not online, that mail would have to be stored on the server, and start piling up until I show up online.

IGN: Does it sound like something you'd like to address in the next version?

Katsuya Eguchi: Of course!

IGN: What are you working on now?

Katsuya Eguchi: I'm actually in a team that's looking at the Revolution outside of the controller, coming up with unique features of the system that has nothing to do with it. Unfortunately, I can't say what we've come up with yet. I'm not working on anything on the Nintendo DS - busy busy busy working on the Revolution.

IGN: Will we see what you're working on at E3?

Katsuya Eguchi: I hope so! We're trying to get stuff ready for E3. If we do our best and get it ready, then it'll be there. If we do our best and it's not ready then it won't be. (laughs)